Tuesday, January 27, 2009

XML or Haystack Syndrome

If you're a visual learner, you'll love the only guidebook series that takes a visual approach to professional-level computer topics. High-resolution screen shots demonstrate over 100 key XML techniques, including choosing a text editor, adding entities and CDATA to XML documents, restricting the recurrence of elements, and generating XML using Access or Excel. Learn to create an XHTML transitional page, loop and sort with XSLT, debug with Firebug, and much more. Succinct explanations walk you through step by step.

Haystack Syndrome: Sifting Information out of the Data Ocean

Author: Eliyahu M Goldratt

A must for every manager concerned with meeting the challenges of the 21st century. You'll see the differences between data and information in a new light, and understand precisely how misunderstanding those differences can affect the quality of your decision-making process. Starting with the structure of an organization, The Haystack Syndrome ends with a detailed description of the logic that must underpin the information system for any organization to maximize effectiveness.

Part One: Formalizing the Decision Process - Defining the goal, the measurements, and how to continuously improve the whole system - the Theory of Constraints.

Part Two: The Architecture of an Information System - Dealing with information as it relates to the real world; quantifying Murphy, the time-buffer concept, directing process improvements, measuring local performance.

Part Three: Scheduling - how to implement a real process of ongoing improvement requiring interplay between the system and the manager, resolving all conflicts, considering capacity and protection.